Goals

The central theme in this focus area is the re-thinking of public interests in (the regulation of) private relationships. With a broad variety in research subjects and legal disciplines, all researchers aim to find solutions for urgent societal problems, using a law and governance research method.

The focus area is embedded in the Groningen Centre for Law and Governance. The title of the Centre refers to the increasing interdependence between formal and informal forms of regulation and, arising from this, the increasing necessity of studying them together. It is no longer possible to speak of a pure Law with a capital L as the exclusive domain of lawyers which can be studied in isolation from alternative – often informal – forms of regulation and governance undertaken by a range of different actors. A substantial part of the research carried out within the Centre seeks to combine classical legal scholarship with research into the ways legal arrangements interact with informal arrangements.